叫んでも聞こえないこの声

Big and Small

I've been criticized before for talking to people about ideas, and not trying to get to know the actual person. I found it mildly offensive at the time, and have had enough time since then to justify my position to myself several times over (not that I'm necessarily right, but I think I am).

From a grand scheme perspective, people come and go, but ideas can last forever. Bad ideas, of course, have no business existing longer than it takes to realize their folly and use them as a learning tool. What's important here is that ideas, the good ones, stick with us. They may transform or mutate, take on new forms or revisit old ones, but the ideas we've come to adopt as our own become integrated into who and what we are. What we hold to be true is tempered in the fire of experience.

We don't convince ourselves that "life goes on" until we find despair. We don't tell ourselves to "love like [we've] never been hurt" until we've been burned.

We're all collections of ideas. The ones that have helped us to make it through the trials and tribulations of life are the ones we endorse and argue for. When meeting someone and talking with them, then, you get to know the important parts about them not from finding out what bands they like, but from understanding what ideas they apply when they see the world.

There was a quote I saw the other day while driving around: "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

Far be it from me to claim that I didn't feel a small amount of vindication upon reading that, but I do think that it rings true.

Posted by aoshi at October 22, 2007 1:45 AM | TrackBack